The present invention pertains to a method for the fabrication of features with a submicron width, such as trenches which are commonly used for the isolation of components on chips. In prior art the method of producing submicron features employs E beam lithography. While the E beam can be used to produce submicron features it is a very expensive process due to the cost of the E beam equipment. The use of an E beam also results in a very low through-put due to its slow process speed.
Other processes for producing submicron features involving conventional optical techniques require many steps, complicating and slowing the processing down.